Bosch will cut 750 jobs in its Rodez plant by 2025 due to the contraction of the diesel market in recent years, amplified by the coronavirus crisis.

Employees denounce a "betrayal" of the agreement reached in 2018 while management considers this decision "essential".

More than half of the employees of the Bosch plant in Rodez will see their jobs cut.

The German automotive supplier, specializing in injectors and spark plugs for diesel engines, wants to cut 750 jobs by 2025. An earthquake in this area where it was the largest private employer, with 1,250 employees.

Management highlights the fall in sales of diesel cars to explain this decision, but the unions denounce a betrayal of the commitments made in 2018.

An "essential" measure for management

Between 2018 and 2020, the production of diesel injectors was halved in Rodez.

Europeans are turning away from diesel vehicles and the Bosch factory is suffering the repercussions.

The situation has worsened with the global crisis and the Covid epidemic.

Bosch president for France and the Benelux, Heiko Carrie, considers the measure "essential" in the current context.

"The desire is to avoid forced departures" through early retirement and voluntary departures, says the manager who intends to see 150 employees leave from 2021.

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The Bosch group nevertheless asserts its desire to maintain industrial activity on the site and is banking on the diversification initiated two years ago.

This restructuring, assures the boss of Bosch France, "gives a real perspective for the site and a necessary stability for the years to come. (...) We are no longer in a logic of closing the site".

"A betrayal" for the unions

The unions speak of treason.

In 2018, three of them signed a transition agreement providing for the efforts of employees on their RTT days and their incentive bonuses in return for several million euros of investments on the site.

For Jean-Pierre Cabrol, SOUTH delegate of the plant, the promises were not kept.

"It's a betrayal because with all the commitments that the employees had made to make efforts and give a future to this site, we had given ourselves time and we see that the management is abandoning us. We are really disgusted. . "

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Same story for Cédric Belledent, also SOUTH delegate, who denounces "a real blow with a sledgehammer, a knife in the back".

"We will do everything to avoid this tragedy. So many job cuts, we did not expect and it is difficult to swallow."

For the unions, it is a whole section of the know-how of this factory which is doomed to disappear.

The PS president of the Occitanie region, Carole Delga, "the decision of the German group, present for nearly 60 years in Rodez, is a real blow".

She believes that "the actions taken by Bosch to relaunch and maintain the activity have not been up to par."